Description
The angelfish is unmistakable: triangular silhouette, elongated fins and a bearing no other community fish has. It is probably the fish most often bought on love at first sight.
And also the one most often bought without doing two sums. The first is size: an adult angelfish is not 15 cm long, it is over 20 cm from top to bottom. The tank does not just need length, it needs height. Below 50 cm the fish ends up with bent, permanently damaged fins, and that cannot be undone.
The second is time: it lives eight to ten years. That is a longer commitment than many pets, and far beyond a tetra or a guppy. Buy thinking about where you will be in a decade.
In exchange you get a fish with real character, one that recognises people, interacts, and in a pair displays some of the most complete parental behaviour in the freshwater aquarium.
Behavior
It is a cichlid, and that is worth remembering despite its reputation as a calm community fish. It means two things.
First: it is a predator. In the wild it feeds on small fish, and it will do the same in the tank. Neons, cardinals and any tetra under 3 cm disappear one by one, usually at night. That is not a compatibility failure, it is its diet. If you want angelfish, choose tank mates that will not fit in its mouth.
Second: once paired it turns territorial. An established pair claims an area of the tank and defends it with determination, and in a medium tank that can be half the aquarium. What usually happens is this: someone buys six juveniles, two pair up and harass the other four into a corner. If you have no space to separate them, buy two, not six.
It lives well with medium and large tetras, pearl gourami, corydoras, bristlenose and other loricariids. The key is the size of the tank mates, not their temperament.
Avoid housing it with neons and small tetras, for the reason above; tiger barbs, which nip its long fins; and other territorial cichlids in tanks that cannot take it.
With shrimp: no. Not even adults.
Habitat
Pterophyllum scalare lives in still areas of the Amazon basin: slow side channels, lagoons and flooded margins, among submerged roots and vertical vegetation. Warm, soft, acidic water with very little flow.
Its shape is a direct adaptation to that environment. The tall, compressed body lets it move between roots and vertical stems where a torpedo-shaped fish could not go, and the vertical banding camouflages it among them.
That tells you how to set up the tank: vertical structure. Tall roots, standing wood, long-leaved plants such as Vallisneria or Echinodorus. A horizontally decorated tank with low rocks and carpet plants is attractive but gives it no sense of security.
And for the same reason: little flow. It comes from still water, and a powerful filter in a tall tank forces it to swim against a current all day with a body not built for it.
Details
🌊 Water parameters
🐠 Minimum tank size
Breeding
It forms lasting pairs and spawns on vertical surfaces: a broad Amazon sword leaf, a ceramic tube, a flat stone set on edge or the tank glass itself.
Before spawning the two of them clean the site thoroughly, an unmistakable behaviour that warns you what is coming. Afterwards both guard the eggs, fan them for oxygen and remove any that spoil.
Once hatched, they move the larvae elsewhere and watch over them until they swim freely. An angelfish defending its spawn will face fish far larger than itself without hesitation.
One detail that puzzles many people: the first spawns are almost always lost. They eat them, abandon them or fail to fertilise them properly. That is entirely normal in young pairs and does not mean you did anything wrong; by the third or fourth attempt they usually succeed.
And something worth knowing: it cannot be reliably sexed by eye. The usual way to get a pair is to raise a group of juveniles and let them pair off themselves, with the compatibility problem already described.
Diet
Omnivorous with a healthy appetite and no feeding difficulties.
- Staple: quality cichlid flake or pellets, sized to its mouth.
- Supplement: frozen brine shrimp, daphnia and mysis, two or three times a week.
- Plant matter: some spirulina in the diet does it good.
One specific warning: do not overuse red bloodworm. It is very fatty and very tempting, and it is easy to slip into feeding it daily because the fish devours it. In excess it causes digestive problems and liver degeneration in the medium term. Once a week is enough.
It feeds in the middle zone and has no trouble competing, so in a normal community no special precautions are needed. Quite the opposite: watch that it does not take the ration of slower bottom fish.
Plan your next aquarium
Is this fish right for you? Plan a suitable aquarium before setting it up.